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paintings, and you can probably name three of them.

As we'll see, the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create

solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the

humans in the marketplace.

The Contradiction Between Shipping and Changing the World

Sometimes, shipping feels like a compromise. You set out to make a huge difference, to

create art that matters and to do your best work. Then a deadline arrives and you have to

cut it short. Is shipping that important?

I think it is. I think the discipline of shipping is essential in the long-term path to

becoming indispensable. While some artists manage to work for years or decades and

actually ship something important, far more often we find the dreams of art shattered by

the resistance. We give in to the fear and our art ends up lying in a box somewhere,

unseen.

When you first adopt the discipline of shipping, your work will appear to suffer. There's

no doubt that another hour, day, or week would have added some needed polish. But over

time--rather quickly, actually--you'll see that shipping becomes part of the art and

shipping makes it work. Saturday Night Live goes on each week, ready or not. The show

is live, and it's on Saturday. No screwing around about shipping. There are no do-overs,

no stalls, no delays. Sometimes the show suffers, of course, but on balance, it's the

shipping (built right into the name) that actually makes the show work.

Not shipping on behalf of your goal of changing the world is often a symptom of the

resistance. Call its bluff, ship always, and then change the world.

What It Means to Ship

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really

finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog,

showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins,

sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside

world. The French refer to esprit d'escalier, the clever comeback that you think of a few

minutes after the moment has passed. This is unshipped insight, and it doesn't count for

much.

Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, without hassle, emergency, or fear-this is a rare skill, something that makes you indispensable.

Why is shipping so difficult? I think there are two challenges and one reason:

The challenges:

1. Thrashing

2. Coordination

And the reason:

The resistance.

Thrashing

Steve McConnell helped us understand how poorly timed thrashing sabotages every

failed software project. It turns out that the problem extends far beyond software.

Any project worth doing involves invention, inspiration, and at least a little bit of making

stuff up. Traditionally, we start with an inkling, adding more and more detail as we

approach the ship date. And the closer we get to shipping, the more thrashing occurs.

Thrashing is the apparently productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as

it develops. Thrashing might mean changing the user interface or rewriting an

introductory paragraph. Sometimes thrashing is merely a tweak; other times it involves

major surgery.

Thrashing is essential. The question is: when to thrash?

In the typical amateur project, all the thrashing is near the end. The closer we get to

shipping, the more people get involved, the more meetings we have, the more likely the

CEO wants to be involved. And why not? What's the point of getting involved early

when you can't see what's already done and your work will probably be redone anyway?

The point of getting everyone involved early is simple: thrash late and you won't ship.

Thrash late and you introduce bugs. Professional creators thrash early. The closer the

project gets to completion, the fewer people see it and the fewer changes are permitted.

Every software project that has missed its target date (every single